New Ideals Through the Comforter

“Until the Spirit be poured out from on high and the wilderness become a fruitful field and the fruitful field be counted for a forest.’’ Isa. xxxii:15.

THEN the Comforter comes in His fulness, He not only changes the wilderness into a fruitful field, but even ‘’the fruitful field shall be counted for a forest.” This is a very remarkable expression and the obvious meaning is that so great shall be the transformation of the church, and of the Christian life of the individual, that the vision we have hitherto known shall seem as nothing in comparison with the blessing that is to come. Even the fruitful valley will be so improved that it will seem as if it had only been a forest before.

One of the worst features of the private and public life even of the people of God is the tendency to sink into ruts and to grow rigid and frigid in the formal, conventional routine of life. The old proverb, “Good enough is never good,” is in place here. No doubt the reason so little progress is made by very many persons is because they are measuring themselves by old standards and really never getting any further on. When the Holy Spirit comes, He lifts our minds to new ideals and gives us conceptions of things so much in advance of our present experiences that we long for higher ground; the saved beconit sanctified and the sanctified rise to a life of sacrifice and unselfish service.

Sometimes God permits us to see in some other life the glorious possibilities that we are missing and we rise up to new planes, new ambitions, new visions and new commissions of service for God and man. Again he declares in the second chapter of I. Corinthians, ‘’Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor hath entered into the heart of man the things which God had prepared for them that love Him, but God hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit.’’ When this vision comes there rises before us the alluring prospect of that better country which Christ is waiting to bring us into: —

“We stand, and from the mountain top
See all the land below.

Rivers of milk and honey rise
And all the fruit of paradise,

In endless plenty grow.”

There is a thrilling story told of a man of great wealth and brilliant genius who had become a leader in the industrial life of the land, and the master of an enormous fortune, but who had no taste for art or music or high things. One day he was called upon by an old schoolmate from the distant land where both were born and who in turn had become illustrious in his profession as a musician. He invited the merchant prince to come to one of his concerts and hear him play on his famous violin, but the millionaire laughed at him and said he had no time for such trifles; he was engaged in more practical things. At last the musician caught his friend by strategy. He took his violin one day to the factory of the rich man, and asked him to make some trifling repairs upon it, as he was a machinist while the other was only a musician. After the trifling work had been done, the musician began to play to see if it was all right, but before half a dozen bars of music had been rolled off, the millionaire was standing with the tears streaming down his face with undisguised admiration and delight. The music had broken his heart and the musician had conquered him by his wiles. Not only so, the whole factory became demoralized, and as he played on, the entrancing strains gathered clerks, foremen, porters, everybody, in crowds around the door, and at last the musician apologized for disturbing their business; but the great man, wiping the tears from his eyes, said, ‘’Don’t stop for the world. Play on; I never knew till this moment how much I had missed out of my life.” Poor man, he found that day a new world of sweetness to which he had been a stranger, and his heart longed for more.

In a far higher sense that is what happens when the light of heaven falls upon the heart and we ‘‘see the King in His beauty and the land that is very far off.” Then earthly things pale before the vision of that better country and our hearts long for God and heaven. Oh, if we should go on in our blindness until it is too late! Oh, if some day we should wake to hear “the voice of harpers harping with their harps,” and the new song they “sing above, and discover at last that we have no part in it, but have thrown our lives away upon the barren, empty wilderness of life, ours would be the eternal sorrow and an irretrievable loss!

Let us ask God to open our vision, to waken our hearts, to show us the things that are true and good and beautiful and everlasting, “the things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, nor entered into the heart of man, but which God hath prepared for them that love Him,” and “which God hath revealed unto us by His Spirit.”

Oh, that the great Revealer might come to us and show us the vision! Oh, that the great Inspirer might come to us and lift our hearts to meet it!